"Pole-Pole" Up Kilimanjaro: Seattle Banker Tackles Tanzanian Peak

"Pole-Pole" Up Kilimanjaro: Seattle Banker Tackles Tanzanian Peak

Article excerpt

The Great Barranco Wall stared down at banker Laurie Stewart. She stared back at the 800-foot wall, and her jaw dropped.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"I just couldn't believe that you could climb that," says Stewart, 61. "But I did."

Stewart and her party of seven Mount Kilimanjaro climbers, along with porters and guides, had slept in sight of this formidable feature, and, the next day, scaled it. "We couldn't use our trekking poles," Stewart recalls, now safely back at Sound Community Bank in Seattle, where she is CEO. "They refer to it as a 'scramble.' You put your hand on this rock, and your foot on that rock and then you lift yourself up." Over and over and over--while carrying a 20-pound pack. "It was not fun," she says. "But it was beautiful."

The Barranco Wall opened the fourth day of the party's climb of the African peak for charity. As recounted in the September First Person, Stewart, who had worked her way from overweight to marathons, set a personal stretch goal to climb Mount Kilimanjaro to raise funds for breast cancer research. While Kilimanjaro isn't a "technical" climb (ropes and pitons), it is strenuous.

The ascent had started badly for Stewart. On the second day she had a spate of dizziness and a fall. At one point she fell behind. "I took about five minutes to sit on a rock and cry," says Stewart. "Then I realized my options were up or down, and I decided to push on up."

The guides use the term "pole-pole"--which they pronounce "poley-poley. …